I agree that WotLK was the sweet spot, but I am going to strongly disagree that they shouldn't have changed anything. Active mitigation is a lot more enjoyable than the WotLK style of tanking. The talent system in MoP is much better than that in WotLk. I've never enjoyed my warlock more than I do with the MoP changes.

And, pretty much, etc. The game has grown and it needs to continue to grow. Some mistakes have been made, but the game is getting better.

I agree that it was the best time, anyone could get into ICC and see the content but only the best got to be called Kingslayer, also having more bosses to kill in ICC kept motivation and something to do. In other words everyone didn't instantly quit because they went 12/12 on patch day.

If I remember the "sweet spot" correctly we had 9 months of a raid and a patch that was poorly received (Ruby Sanctum).

12 months of ICC actually. So if you don't count Ruby Sanctum, there was 12 months of no new content, yet the game still climbed to 12 million players by the end of the expansion.

Some may argue that the climb from the end of BC to the end of Wrath was weak compared to the end of Vanilla, however I think it would be more appropriate to say 12 million was the player saturation point.

Ever since then, the game has lost 4 million players. Sure some may just be tired of the game, but it would seem it would be wise of Blizzard to try to emulate Wrath's winning formula. Shockingly, they do not appear to be doing that.

Again, Blizzard states that people drift because of no new content, so their focus is to push content out faster and faster. Then what made subs continue to rise in Wrath even though we went from December 2009 to December 2010 without a new raid?

And I'm just here, sitting, laughing my ass off remembering the old days. Yeah, you probably remember them too, when Wrath Of The Lich King was current content and was called the worst expansion set ever.

I agree that WotLK was the sweet spot, but I am going to strongly disagree that they shouldn't have changed anything. Active mitigation is a lot more enjoyable than the WotLK style of tanking. The talent system in MoP is much better than that in WotLk. I've never enjoyed my warlock more than I do with the MoP changes.

And, pretty much, etc. The game has grown and it needs to continue to grow. Some mistakes have been made, but the game is getting better.

Sorry but I am also going to disagree with you.

The talent system in MoP is severely lackluster. As an warlock main I've gotta say that the class has been completely demolished (mostly affliction). Removing instant shadow bolt procs and giving us a channel spell, making us choose between death coil and howl of terror, changing how soul link works, not only our damage is very low, the design changes were completely wrong, unpopular and uncalled for.

Personally I thought wrath was doo doo, LFD made dungeons a snooze fest, pull all the trash in the room at once and aoe without risk of dying, ICC for a year, PvP had some massive ups and downs in wrath too. I think the high sub rate had more to do with the lich king story line which many people wanted to see play out from the wc3 days.

I've made no secret of it that I think Wrath was the best Wow ever was. Everything about that expansion - the content, the atmosphere, the music - was perfect IMO. If they somehow made it so that Cata didn't exist and you could go from 70-85 in Northrend, I'd love it. I'll never forget the first time I saw the bears catching fish in Grizzly Hills, or the animals stalking the critters all over Northrend, or riding on the back of a storm giant...

Agreed. Whatever they did in wrath it worked. My specuation on why this was is because:

- Large, open world. Northrend was huge, and probably the largest 'expansion' area to date.
- The story focus on Arthas was the best villain focus they've had really, also yogg saron had its own neat quaility.
- The raiding tiers, there were several, and by the end of the expansion, the weekly raiding quest system had some really good reason to pug into the raids, with alts, and do things with them.
- ICC was probably the best final raid, not on par with ulduar itself, but it was still fun, better then compared to sunwell and dragonsoul.
- introduction to badge system
- intro to LFD

And lots of other reasons that shaped the game for so many different styles of playerbase.

The talent system in MoP is severely lackluster. As an warlock main I've gotta say that the class has been completely demolished (mostly affliction). Removing instant shadow bolt procs and giving us a channel spell, making us choose between death coil and howl of terror, changing how soul link works, not only our damage is very low, the design changes were completely wrong, unpopular and uncalled for.

And, yet, the new talent system is the first time in a long time that we've had any real choices to make. The old talent system was paint-by-numbers (in other words, if you didn't pick the elitistjerks talent spec, you had the wrong spec).

The whole point of the new talent system is to give us actual, real choices... and it has done exactly that. Warlocks aren't the only class that lost/have to choose key abilities.

Also: Why complain about the loss of shadow bolt? Malefic grasp makes a lot more sense for affliction than shadow bolt ever did (affliction being a dot spec and malefic grasp proccing your dots). Instead of instant shadow bolts, we get a soul shard. Soul shard = on-demand DPS increase. Again, much better than an instant shadow bolt.